A major new history of the Crusades with an unprecedented wide scope,
told in a tableau of portraits of people on all sides of the wars, from
the author of Powers and Thrones.
For more than one thousand years, Christians and Muslims lived side by
side, sometimes at peace and sometimes at war. When Christian armies
seized Jerusalem in 1099, they began the most notorious period of
conflict between the two religions. Depending on who you ask, the fall
of the holy city was either an inspiring legend or the greatest of
horrors. In Crusaders, Dan Jones interrogates the many sides of the
larger story, charting a deeply human and avowedly pluralist path
through the crusading era.
Expanding the usual timeframe, Jones looks to the roots of
Christian-Muslim relations in the eighth century and tracks the
influence of crusading to present day. He widens the geographical focus
to far-flung regions home to so-called enemies of the Church, including
Spain, North Africa, southern France, and the Baltic states. By telling
intimate stories of individual journeys, Jones illuminates these
centuries of war not only from the perspective of popes and kings, but
from Arab-Sicilian poets, Byzantine princesses, Sunni scholars, Shi'ite
viziers, Mamluk slave soldiers, Mongol chieftains, and barefoot friars.
Crusading remains a rallying call to this day, but its role in the
popular imagination ignores the cooperation and complicated coexistence
that were just as much a feature of the period as warfare. The age-old
relationships between faith, conquest, wealth, power, and trade meant
that crusading was not only about fighting for the glory of God, but
also, among other earthly reasons, about gold. In this richly dramatic
narrative that gives voice to sources usually pushed to the margins, Dan
Jones has written an authoritative survey of the holy wars with global
scope and human focus.
